Forget the Year, Forget Yourself

I vacuumed the office today. Sian stopped by with Krispie Kreme donuts for everyone. Two dozen. The mood was home-improvement. I learned that a Phillips-head screwdriver is called a plus-driver in Japan because it's shaped like a plus sign.

Around seven thirty pm, no one had e-mailed my telephone. I asked my boss what I could do to help around the office. She said I could help Sato-san fix dinner.

Nabe is a wintertime stew good for keeping warm together. Everyone huddles and cuddles around the pot while it cooks in the middle of the table. The ingredients of tonight's nabe included leeks, cabbage, tofu, mushrooms, mochi, udon, clear noodles, and Kobe beef, sent from Kyoto by the parents of the owner of the school.

This owner refilled my wine glass and asked if I'd ever done drugs. He told me about the time he watched the sunlight enter the barrel of a gun pointed at his face in the middle of the dead calm of the sea. It was a fight about soy sauce.

There were flakes of gold in the sake. Everyone's eyes were melting into tiny movie screens.

The demure girl who sits at the front desk most days was now wearing expressions I'd never seen on her, and pointing her fingers at her coworkers in a slow-motion dream voice. I couldn't understand what she was saying but it was causing a squinty-eyed, open-mouthed uproar.

And then there was crying. There were no explanations.

By the time I had folded the accumulation of shoes and sweaters from my office cupboard into a Sony robot bag, a different staff member was crying. I tried to hug her but she pulled away involuntarily. It must have looked embarrassing.

Tokyo Stories is a non-fiction blog.